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Hello everyone, i just did a mod on my friend's AES for him, its a PAL unit so it was 50Hz, it is now 60Hz, and i took a before and after screen shot for you all to see incase you havent seen or heard about the difference.

This AES is a 3-3 revision, and someone had added some sort of RF output device, like the one on a Sega Master System or Mega Drive.

With no further ado, here are the pics, first is untouched, still on 50Hz

Now the 2nd pic is STILL IN PAL COLOUR SYSTEM, it is NOT in NTSC, and PAL is in someways better than NTSC anyway.

Now here is the shot of the machine pushing 60Hz:

This is via RGB-S on a graphics grade CRT projection system, using a pretty low end digidal camera, but the differences are pretty easy to spot

NAH DUDE...
it was 'crushed' before, if you will. Changing 'up' to 60Hz stretches the picture 'back to it's original proportions!

Like NEOGEOMAN said though, in some ways the picture is actually better when outputting a PAL signal - namely the quality. 60Hz is faster overall, however, PAL is pretty much ALWAYS sharper and is made up of more TV lines overall - giving a better picture. I don't know how the conversion process works, but the picture was always shrunk in the past when converting from JP/US NTSC to PAL. A lack of optimisation one presumes?

NAH DUDE...
it was 'crushed' before, if you will. Changing 'up' to 60Hz stretches the picture 'back to it's original proportions!

Like NEOGEOMAN said though, in some ways the picture is actually better when outputting a PAL signal - namely the quality. 60Hz is faster overall, however, PAL is pretty much ALWAYS sharper and is made up of more TV lines overall - giving a better picture. I don't know how the conversion process works, but the picture was always shrunk in the past when converting from JP/US NTSC to PAL. A lack of optimisation one presumes?

I suppose PAL 60 is the best signal there is theoretically...

I thought the quality had to do with RGB. I did a quick check on wikipedia (just so you know if this info is bogus) and got this:

The second pic does not look like 320x224. I'm not trying to be difficult, I'm just at a loss as to this stuff. Plus I plan on getting some Europe-only megadrive games in the future and would like to be in-the-know when the time comes to mod my system.

Are you saying all the home versions are "crushed?" Are the pixels on the arcade monitors taller than they are wide?

Mad respect to neogeoman for having the chops to do this kind of stuff.
Edited by boogiepop on 21. March 2011 16:59

Sorry i took so long to get back to you, youve missed the facts to it all here, and you seem to be confused.

My screen format is 4:3, 120 inch diagonal. Will post a picture with me standing in there to show it in better proportions soon, so youll get an idea of why it may look out of proportion with a cheaper digital camera.

The system now outputs PAL 60, and not NTSC, so when used on composite video, the colour will be PAL, and the refresh is 60 Hz. PAL 60 is not a 625 line system, it is only 525 lines like NTSC, which explains the increase in vertical amplitude on the screen.

Ill work through this as best i can to clarify it all for you. Some of this you may allready know from something else.

NeoGeoNinja wrote:

boogiepop wrote:
Isn't it stretched now though?

NAH DUDE...
it was 'crushed' before, if you will. Changing 'up' to 60Hz stretches the picture 'back to it's original proportions!

Like NEOGEOMAN said though, in some ways the picture is actually better when outputting a PAL signal - namely the quality. 60Hz is faster overall, however, PAL is pretty much ALWAYS sharper and is made up of more TV lines overall - giving a better picture. I don't know how the conversion process works, but the picture was always shrunk in the past when converting from JP/US NTSC to PAL. A lack of optimisation one presumes?

I suppose PAL 60 is the best signal there is theoretically...

The resolution of the PAL 50 Hz standard is indeed higher, which is what makes the boarders on the PAL version of the console, because instead of fitting the vertical lines into a field of 525 lines, youre fitting the exact same number of lines into a field of 625 lines, with the boarders making up the unused lines.

There is no question about what youre seeing on my screen, it is the same info on screen, however one is 50 Hz, and the other is 60 Hz, but is STILL a PAL colour system.

Another way of saying this is that the PAL 50 Hz output is squashing the vertical amplitude of the picture to fit it line for line into 625 lines, where as at 60 Hz, it is displaying a near full screen, due to the exact same number of display lines being fit into a 525 line system.

I thought the quality had to do with RGB. I did a quick check on wikipedia (just so you know if this info is bogus) and got this:

The second pic does not look like 320x224. I'm not trying to be difficult, I'm just at a loss as to this stuff. Plus I plan on getting some Europe-only megadrive games in the future and would like to be in-the-know when the time comes to mod my system.

Are you saying all the home versions are "crushed?" Are the pixels on the arcade monitors taller than they are wide?

Mad respect to neogeoman for having the chops to do this kind of stuff.

I can assure you that on my display when using RGB, the MVS and the AES have the EXACT SAME signal as each other for each game, and it is indeed correct that some games dont use the full width of the raster, on my display i will have small boarders at the sides of the image with some games, and the same games do it the same way on both MVS and 60 Hz AES when using RGB.

The res then is 304x224, adjusting the front and rear porch settings can change this.

PAL res is usually called 576i, which is 720x576 interlaced. Here is abit from Wiki: "In this context, 576i invariably means

625 lines per frame, of which 576 carry picture content
25 frames per second interlaced yielding 50 fields per second
Two interlaced video fields per frame"

Now NTSC is usually called 480i, which is 640x480 interlaced, ( in this case is 240p. http://en.wikiped.../wiki/240p )
From Wiki: "480i is the shorthand name for a video mode, namely the US NTSC television system or digital television systems with the same characteristics. The i, which is sometimes uppercase, stands for interlaced, the 480 for a vertical frame resolution of 480 lines containing picture information; while NTSC has a total of 525 lines, only 480 of these are used to display the image"

Now onto the speed variation between 50 and 60 Hz, the MVS is 60 Hz output. The PAL AES in standard form puts out 50 Hz, and hence, the games run at a slower pace so each frame is still in sync with the display format. Then when you go to 60 Hz, it is abit faster.

If you play NAM 1975 on a PAL console, you get slow down in some parts, but on an NTSC console, the game is running a bit faster, and the slowdown seems to be worse. The game its-self runs at a slightly faster pace overall, as do all other games.

Pixels and pixel structures... When youre talking about an analog CRT display, there are no fixed pixel grids as such, hence they are still the best display for resolving any resolution without interpolation. No digital display can claim this, cause they all have a fixed number of pixels in each way to make up the display, called the "native resolution". A direct view CRT does have lines of coloured phosfor running down the tube face, red, green, and blue lines, repeating from one side to the other, however count them up and youll see there is way more than the max res the TV set can resolve. Vertically, the limit on the number of lines is limited by the circuitry in most cases. Arcade picture tubes are the same tubes you find in most domestic TVs, the driving circuitry is different, and is usually aimed at the best output for the resolution it is going to run on. An analog CRT 3 tube projector ( front or rear projection ) doesnt have any lines at all, the tube face is painted with an even coating of phosphor in one colour only, meaning resolving capacity is left to the tube face surface area and the circuitry driving the tube. A 9 inch projection tube could possibly resolve 2500x2000 pixels if the circuitry could feed it in, but then the same tube could also very accurately display 320x224 with a perfect dot for dot resolve. This is one area where CRT will ALWAYS have the upper hand over LCD/DLP/Plasma, and unless you can find an LCD/DLP/Plasma with a native res of 320x224, this is exactly why they dont display older video games very nicely, cause they are trying to fill a screen made up of 1920x1080 dots with an image made from 320x224 dots.

If you use RF, composite, or S-video, i think youll find it will display full width regardless of the game, but i cant remember. Not all games have the side boarders, and it can be fixed by increasing the horizontal amplitude if your display device allows it. If you do though, the games using the full width will have their sides cut off.

If you have any questions, ill try to answer them faster this time!! Im really sorry i didnt see your replies earlier. Hope i havent confused you further!! Edited by NEO-GEO man on 23. March 2011 12:17

Looking back at the NAM photos, take note of the player 1 green cross hair, you will see in the 50 Hz picture the vertical lines going towards the center of the cross hair appear to be a solid bar, where as the horizontal lines apear to be 3 dots or short lines. Looking at the 60 Hz pic, all 4 lines ( 2 horizontal and 2 vertical ) appear to be very simular or the same.

i hate 50hz too. however you are right Neo Geo man it can be better if a game is specifically written for the system. a good example of a proper pal 50hz game is DOA 2 on dreamcast (there is also a PAL 60 option if you want to compare). its full screen and runs at 50hz, and as a result has a better picture quality than the NTSC 60hz version (more lines make up the picture). it runs at exactly the same speed too. the only minor negative is that the screen is updated 50 times a second rather than 60 but this is pretty imperceptable.

NEO-GEO man wrote:
The resolution of the PAL 50 Hz standard is indeed higher, which is what makes the boarders on the PAL version of the console, because instead of fitting the vertical lines into a field of 525 lines, youre fitting the exact same number of lines into a field of 625 lines, with the boarders making up the unused lines.

There is no question about what youre seeing on my screen, it is the same info on screen, however one is 50 Hz, and the other is 60 Hz, but is STILL a PAL colour system.

Another way of saying this is that the PAL 50 Hz output is squashing the vertical amplitude of the picture to fit it line for line into 625 lines, where as at 60 Hz, it is displaying a near full screen, due to the exact same number of display lines being fit into a 525 line system.

Okay, I think I'm understanding this part. You're saying that it's 4:3 and that there are usually blank lines above and below that are part of the picture rather than actual excess, right? So when you altered it, the black pixels were pushed out of the limits of the screen giving it a full 4:3 picture without any unused excess. If I'm misunderstanding, I truly apologize as you went into great lengths to provide an in-depth answer. My question is why would this be considered an improvement when, as the video I posted clearly showed, the screens at the arcade have the wide-screen proportions? Don't they have the black lines above and below present in the picture and are not, in fact, stretching those 525 lines over a 625 line area?

I think I understand the 60 Hz running at a different speed and thus the slowdown. As for the differences in the pictures, I see brighter colors in the sky on the first one. Is that because of the angle the picture was taken at? Also, when I zoom in on the edge of the building at the far right, the first picture looks pretty straight while the edge in the second looks almost scrambled. Why is this?

I think I'm going to come back in a bit and reread the entire post because there's a shit ton of information up there. Might be clearer after the second read.
Edited by boogiepop on 24. March 2011 00:04

BoogiePop, the pics were indeed taken at two different times, from two slightly different positions, and with slightly different lighting conditions, cause i put my finger over 3/4 of the flash to stop it completely washing the picture out.

These pictures really do nothing at all to indicate the picture quality that i see in the flesh, but i have allowed the light from the flash just enough to see the outline of the screen on my wall, so it can be seen where the actual picture on the screen starts and stops.

In reality, if you were here and saw the picture for yourself, youd see that in terms of clarity and sharpness, the before and after shots were exactly the same in terms of colour and contrast.

Sorry to have hit you with so much info in one go, but its better to give you all i think i can tell you, and then from there you can research selected items on the internet to get further clarification if i cant help you, sometimes it is hard for me to explain things that i understand in a way that others can understand!!

RiKo wrote:
i hate 50hz too. however you are right Neo Geo man it can be better if a game is specifically written for the system. a good example of a proper pal 50hz game is DOA 2 on dreamcast (there is also a PAL 60 option if you want to compare). its full screen and runs at 50hz, and as a result has a better picture quality than the NTSC 60hz version (more lines make up the picture). it runs at exactly the same speed too. the only minor negative is that the screen is updated 50 times a second rather than 60 but this is pretty imperceptable.

and impressive projections screen Neo Geo man. wow thats big

Thanks mate Yes there are a few Sega Saturn games and also PSone games that are almost full screen on PAL 50, and do indeed contain more lines in their picture than the NTSC 60 versions, which i believe is why games like Sega Rally and Virtua Fighter 2 came out later on the Saturn in PAL countries than they did in USA, and i can say on my Saturn here, flicking the switch to 60Hz on Sega Rally cuts part of the image off when playing the PAL version, and it doesnt appear to be any faster in this particular game.

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